Polycrystalline thin film cadmium telluride solar cells fabricated by electrodeposition. Annual subcontract report, 20 March 1993--19 March 1994

摘要

This report describes the principal results of work performed during the second year of a 3-year program at the Colorado School of Mines (CSM). The work on transparent conducting oxides was carried out primarily by CSM students at NREL and is described in three publications listed in Appendix C. The high-quality ZnO produced from the work was incorporated into a copper indium diselenide cell that exhibited a world-record efficiency of 16.4%. Much of the time was devoted to the improvement of cadmium sulfide films deposited by chemical bath deposition methods and annealed with or without a cadmium chloride treatment. Progress was also made in the electrochemical deposition of cadmium telluride. High-quality films yielding CdS/CdTe/Au cells of greater than 10% efficiency are now being produced on a regular basis. We explored the use of zinc telluride back contacts to form an n-i-p cell structure as previously used by Ametek. We began small-angle x-ray scattering (SAXS) studies to characterize crystal structures, residual stresses, and microstructures of both CdTe and CdS. Large SAXS signals were observed in CdS, most likely because of scattering from gain boundaries. The signals observed to date from CdTe are much weaker, indicating a more homogeneous microstructure. We began to use the ADEPT modeling program, developed at Purdue University, to guide our understanding of the CdS/CdTe cell physics and the improvements that will most likely lead to significantly enhanced efficiencies.